Files.com offers a full-featured in-browser file editor and online previewer for typical work document types such as documents, spreadsheets and presentations. This is used both for authoring and for viewing a variety of document types, depending upon each user's permissions to the file they're accessing.

Alternatively, customers who are also customers of Microsoft Office can instead enable our Microsoft Office for Web integration. This will replace the default Files.com editor with Microsoft Office for Web for viewing and editing standard productivity suite formats.

The Files.com editor programs support many advanced features such as high-fidelity rendering, advanced styling and formatting, spreadsheet analysis tasks, and transitions and presenter mode for presentations.

The Files.com editor offers mail merge, importing CSV documents into spreadsheets, adding watermarks to documents, even dragging contents from one document into another – all within your browser, without needing a separate application.

Required Permissions

You need Full Permission on the folder containing the document you want to edit with the Files.com editor. If you do not have Full Permission, then you will be able to open the document, but not edit it.

Working In Share Links

If a site administrator has enabled the setting to Use Office Integration for Full Access Share Links, visitors can use the Files.com Editor to make changes to common business document format files stored within the Share Link. Your site's Online Editor Integration must be configured to use the Files.com Editor, and the share link must allow Full access, including download, upload, modify, and delete.

Co-Authoring and Collaboration

The Files.com editor provides a convenient Co-Authoring experience. Your users can collaborate freely with other users of the Files.com editor - including commenting, reviewing and accepting changes. Real-time collaboration, even for dozens of users at once, is quick and pain-free.

When co-authoring a document, all of the people editing the document must be using Files.com for editing. For example, if a document is stored in a remote mount of a SharePoint server, your users cannot simultaneously edit that document through the Files.com editor and through SharePoint online.

Coauthoring Logging

When more than one person is editing a file at the same time, Files.com history logs will only show the first person who opened the editing session as if they made all the changes. Even if other users make edits during that session, the history logs will still show the original editor as the one who did everything. Once the session is over, there's no way to see in Files.com which user made which specific edits.

Enable Track Changes to determine which collaborators are making specific edits. When you turn on Track Changes in the Files.com editor, your changes are treated as suggestions so that others can see exactly what was edited. Teams review and discuss changes before accepting them into the final version. Each edit is labeled with the editor’s name and a timestamp, making it easy to follow who did what.

Hosted within the Files.com Infrastructure

The Files.com editor is completely hosted within the Files.com infrastructure. Using the Files.com editor means that the files do not leave our own managed infrastructure and will not be transmitted to an external service.

This is unlike many competing services which use managed SaaS services from Microsoft or Zoho which require sending your documents to those vendors in order to facilitate the collaborative editing environment.

Due to the need to support co-editing, the Files.com editor environment uses temporary storage and processing in our USA region regardless of the region in which files are stored permanently. This temporary storage is managed automatically by Files.com and files are not retained in the USA beyond an editing session.

Saving Changes

When you use the Files.com editor to make changes (including co-editing with others), the working file is temporarily copied to the Files.com editor sub-system.

As you make changes to the document within the Files.com editor, changes are automatically uploaded from the editor system to your site every 2 to 5 minutes. When the Files.com editor is closed, any remaining changes are uploaded from the editor system to your site. This results in a small delay before changes are reflected in your site.

After the changes have finished uploading, the last modified time of the file in your site will reflect that recent activity, and you can preview or download the most recent changes from your site.

Logging Changes from the Files.com Editor

Using the Files.com editor will create new entries in your file activity history. The interface for these entries will be "Office".

Creating a new work document in your site will appear in the logs as creating the file, just as if you uploaded it.

Previewing a files using the Files.com editor will be logged as a file download, because the file is being downloaded from your storage to the editor. Similarly, opening a file for editing using the Files.com editor will appear in your logs as a file download.

While you are editing a file using the Files.com editor, the editor will automatically save your changes every 2 to 5 minutes. These saves will appear as changes in the file history.

When you close the Files.com editor, any changes that have not been saved yet will be automatically saved, and this will appear as a change in your file history.

During a co-authoring session with multiple people, all the entries in the activity history will appear with the user ID of the first person to start the session.

Email Notifications

Using the Files.com editor will trigger folder activity email notifications.

When a new document is created within your site, this will trigger upload notifications as the new file is created for you.

When a document is previewed or opened in the editor, it is downloaded from the storage to the document editor, which will trigger notifications for downloads. If you are opening a file type that requires conversion before it can be edited, the system will first upload the converted document, then download that new file to open in the editor. The initial upload and the download can trigger notifications.

While you are editing a document using the Files.com editor, the editor will automatically save your changes every 2 to 5 minutes. These saves will trigger notifications for uploads. Autosaving only happens when the document is being worked on; leaving the editor open for several minutes with no changes will not trigger uploads back to your storage from the editor.

When you close the Files.com editor, your changes will be uploaded to the storage. This triggers upload notifications. If your document was not changed since it was last auto-saved, the document won't be auto-saved again when you close the editor.

Setting the online editor for your site

By default, the Files.com editor will be enabled on your site, although you can change this. For most organizations, we recommend leaving the Files.com editor selected as the editor for your site.